Husband, Wife and Productivity

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Published: July 20, 2012

EVEN allowing for jet lag, Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton were finding it challenging to articulate how they learned to divide their responsibilities as artistic directors of the Sydney Theater Company, whose ''Uncle Vanya'' opens on Saturday. Boldly trying to form complete sentences in a hotel suite only a few hours after arriving in New York from Australia, Mr. Upton compared their partnership to the two halves of a brain, while Ms. Blanchett spoke of ''healthy, anarchic randomness'' balanced by ''rational, militaristic-like precision.''

Then Mr. Upton applied a more logical metaphor, comparing their artistic affiliation to ''the marriage of the business and the art, which isn't necessarily an unhappy marriage.''

''Because in the end, you want happy audiences,'' he said. ''You want people to come and see your shows. No one's trying ----''

''To be Grotowksi,'' Ms. Blanchett said, finishing Mr. Upton's sentence with a reference to that experimental theater director. ''It's just guiding the right audience to the right show.''

Mr. Upton, 46, and Ms. Blanchett, 43, have been married since 1997 and running the Sydney Theater Company since 2008, during which time they have at least figured out a few things. When they depart that company after next year, at the end of their second three-year term, they will leave it with a significantly enhanced international profile.

It is a reputation built on savvy and star-studded programming, including a production of ''Uncle Vanya,'' adapted by Mr. Upton, directed by Tamas Ascher and featuring Ms. Blanchett as Yelena, that runs at City Center as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

They have also raised three young sons while navigating unfamiliar and at times noxious artistic territory, and learning what it means to be each other's better half.

Contemplating a union in which they have committed to sharing their creative endeavors, Mr. Upton said: ''It works for us. Possibly not for everyone else.''

When the two are together in person, their contrasts all but point themselves out. Ms. Blanchett, an Academy Award winner who has played Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth I on screen, was dressed in a rugby shirt and pantsuit and carried herself with a certain upright decorum.

Seated next to her -- a position where anyone would suffer by comparison -- Mr. Upton, a playwright, was unkempt and wearing a leather jacket and jeans, prepared for Australian winter rather than suffocating Manhattan heat.

Both had formative experiences with the Sydney Theater Company, which in the 1990s presented Mr. Upton's adaptation of ''Cyrano de Bergerac'' as well as the production of David Mamet's ''Oleanna'' that helped jump-start Ms. Blanchett's career. They lived for several years in Britain before moving back to Australia in 2007.

From the moment it was announced that Ms. Blanchett and Mr. Upton would inherit the stewardship of the company from Robyn Nevin their tenure has been one of superlatives and extremes.

Before their first season was unveiled, they had secured the patronage of the fashion designer Giorgio Armani and drawn fire from the Australian actor Colin Moody, a departing company member, who in a parting shot said that ''an Oscar for acting is not a suitable recommendation to run the biggest theater company in the country.''

(Ms. Blanchett said in the interview that such criticism was emblematic of ''the obvious stereotyping that goes on in the media.'')

The company's productions that have featured Ms. Blanchett have toured globally and received rapturous reviews. Those include ''Uncle Vanya,'' an experience that Ben Brantley, who saw it in Washington, described in The New York Times as ''among the happiest of my theatergoing life,'' and ''A Streetcar Named Desire,'' directed by Liv Ullmann and starring Ms. Blanchett as Blanche DuBois.

Some productions in which she has been absent have had tougher fates. Reviewing a London production of ''Riflemind,'' written by Mr. Upton and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a critic for The Guardian wrote that Mr. Upton ''has invented a different kind of dull.''

Without citing herself, Ms. Blanchett pointed to productions like Botho Strauss's existentialist play ''Gross und Klein'' (''Big and Small''), in which she played the adrift protagonist, Lotte Kotta, as ''a programming risk'' that could entice audiences ''if you put one familiar component into it.''

Looking at their overall track record, Ms. Blanchett said, ''We've had some doozies and we've had some ----''

''Stinkers,'' Mr. Upton said, laughing.

''No one sets out to have a stinker,'' Ms. Blanchett said.

Richard Roxburgh, a longtime friend of the couple who plays the title character in ''Uncle Vanya,'' said in a telephone interview that, regardless of any baggage they might bring to their jobs, the role of artistic director is inherently ''treacherous'' and ''kind of ghastly.''

''The casting of productions and choosing which plays to put on -- that's easy, that's the glamour part,'' Mr. Roxburgh said. ''It's the day-to-day slogging at things. It's also an ambassadorial role. The politics run very deep.''

For Mr. Upton the position required him to embrace a public spotlight he was unaccustomed to, Mr. Roxburgh said.

''I think originally there was an awkwardness there, a shuffling and a looking at shoes a bit, which was always endearing,'' he said. ''But he's really grabbed that place now.''